Waste collapse is approaching in Ukraine
There are 6,500 official landfills in the country (this is about 10 thousand hectares). More than 35 thousand unofficial dumping sites. In general, according to some data, more than 43 thousand hectares of land are covered by waste.
Ukraine is among the leaders in industrial waste production: 420 million tons are generated annually. As for household waste, we are on the same level with Europeans – approximately 300 kg per year per person, which is 11 million tons of waste for the whole country.But with the difference that in European countries only little percentage of waste is buried in landfills, in contrary in Ukraine 94% of waste is buried.
In Sweden, which is considered a model for solid waste management, only 1% generally end up in landfills.Everything that can be recycled is recycled. The rest is burned in waste to energy plants for production of heat and electricity. There are 34 waste to energy plants per 10 million inhabitants.
– In Ukraine, 3% of waste is burned and the same amount is recycled. The capacity of the “Energia”waste to energy plant is not enough even to serve the capital city, – explains the general director of Clear Energy Andriy Grinenko. – Situation with recycling is also difficult. Because organizing a separate collection of waste is actually quite expensive. At the very least, the current tariffs do not cover costs. Neither local authorities nor residents are ready to raise them to real cost.
According to Andriy Grinenko, the conditions for businesses to invest in waste processing and incineration complexes have not been created either. Now investors are almost unprotected – they can be asked to leave the market at any time, and the paybackperiod of such projects is quite long.
Meanwhile, landfills are overloaded, and the scale of the problem becomes catastrophic. Thus, fires arise constantly, and it is very difficult to extinguish them.Methane, which is formed due to the decay of organic matter, and synthetic materials ignite easily and quickly.Someone throws a cigarette butt; someone nearby starts burning grass… After all, there is a lot of glass among the waste and in sunny weather it works like a lens, so spontaneous combustion is very common.
A landfill alwaysbrings a potential danger of fire. Moreover, there are toxic filtrates that get into groundwater; the occupied with waste areas could be utilized for something useful.
Ukrainians actually pay more for their garbage than anyone. Unfortunately, not with money, but with health and land. Isn’t the price too high?
Therefore, today the Government and the Parliament must initiate and reform waste management system as soon as possible. And to stimulate both the maximum recycling of waste and the introduction of advanced European waste to energy technologies in Ukraine.